As your ministry gains speed, the demands on you are just going to become greater. You might think that once you gain the momentum you’ve been working towards, it will finally free up space in your life. But it won’t. In fact, your time will be even more constrained.

The temptation you’ll face will be to ride your own spiritual coattails.

The great prayer time you had. Last week.
The eye-opening moment you had in your private Bible study. Two months ago.
The game-changing time of fasting you engaged in. Last year.

But it doesn’t work like that. Your relationship with God is only as strong as your most recent encounter with Him.

You must never get to the point where you’re too busy ministering for God that you’re too busy to meet with God. Or you can consider yourself on the clock. For burnout. For a lack of fresh vision. For a moral failure.

And then because of those things, for losing your momentum.

No matter how great your ministry is going…
You’re never going to outgrow your need for prayer.
You’re never going to outgrow your need for study of God’s Word.
You are never going to outgrow your need for God.

He’s what gave you your momentum. He’s what’s going to maintain it. And He’s what’s going to sustain you through it as the demands on your life become greater.

Even Jesus felt the need to go off by himself and spend time in prayer as people began flocking to Him. Personally I’m not going to be the one who says I need less private time with God than Jesus.

Make the decision now. Wake up earlier. Stay up later. Clear out your schedule during the day. Whatever you do, do whatever you have to do to prioritize the presence of God in your life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Furtick

Pastor Steven Furtick is the lead pastor of Elevation Church.
He and his wife, Holly, founded Elevation in 2006 with seven other families. Pastor Steven holds a Master of Divinity degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
He is also the New York Times Best Selling author of Crash the Chatterbox, Greater, and Sun Stand Still. Pastor Steven and Holly live in the Charlotte area with their two sons, Elijah and Graham, and daughter, Abbey.

In this era, we have the opportunity of professional church staff today who utilize their gifting to shape the image and atmosphere of the church organization. But the 100% real impact on the church visitors is genuine evidence of changed lives by the gospel and the active growing discipleship (just as it was in the first century church). One demonstration is financially rich believers ministering equally together with poor believers (how odd, and incredibly miraculous; all humble and bow at the foot of the cross.). It is the awesome contrast of church members vocations, race, gender, age, maturity, gifting, humility that demonstrates to visitors "there is a Spirit in the place". That first-time guest list of 10 are "physical excuses", not spiritual excuses. Those don't tell the story. The condition of facilities and publicly greeting people have zero to do with it. The power of God in and through believers lives dedicated to impact other people with their relationship bridge-building of acceptance of the lost around them. Empowered believers are infectious, loving, helpful, giving, self-less, dynamic, compelling, bold, Christ-filled. As I have been in many church settings domestically and internationally, the facilities can be poor, and yet the fellowship can still be rich. We need to operate with first church humility. People come to Christ on His terms, not on our human abilities of hospitality. A huge catastrophe in a community, disaster relief brings lots of people into churches – many come to the church in those terrible conditions no matter the physical condition of the local church. Off the condition of facility, and onto the condition of God's people (living stones).... and everything else will grow.... and the other physical issues will be corrected by the staff.

Thank you for this article! I'm the pastor of a small church. My gifting is in teaching and we are known for aiding Christians in becoming Biblically literate. Visitor's often comment on God's presence being very real in our services. But we just don't seem to be growing. I have some soul-searching, etc. to do and this article provides some solid ground from which to proceed. Thank you again.